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From the roof of his office, Gov. Najmaldin Karim can see multiethnic Kirkuk laid out below.

Kirkuk sits uneasily on the fault line between Kurdistan to the east, the Shiite-led Baghdad government to the south, and Sunni regions to the west. Karim is a Kurd himself, and a member of one of its big political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

The Kurds regard Kirkuk as part of their ancestral homeland, and the Iraqi constitution calls for a referendum in which the city's Kurdish majority could vote to leave the orbit of Baghdad and become part of Kurdistan.

Karim reckons that Kurds make up a little over 50 percent of the Kirkuk population, while Sunnis account for 32 percent to 35 percent and Turkmen 13 percent to 14 percent.

Karim says he favors a special status for Kirkuk within Kurdistan, like what Quebec has in Canada.